Preparing for his role in James Franco’s new movie Child of God, Scott Haze spent three months sleeping in caves in the mountains of Tennessee. Haze will play Lester Ballard, who retreats into the caves and turns into a violent killer, so the actor wanted to fully understand Ballard’s mindset and decided to spend three months living in a cave.

He tells the Associated Press, “I knew that this was a role that I had to go to crazy extreme lengths… I slept in caves many nights with bats all around. It was crazy. I let everything go, just hung out with the hillbillies and stayed as isolated as possible.”

Haze survived on only one piece of fish and an apple each day, so he lost 45 pounds.

Franco had no idea his leading man had literally become a caveman until Haze turned up for the first day of filming, looking and acting completely in character. “Haze didn’t really talk to anyone, stayed to himself, and was like that for the whole shoot,” Franco said at a press conference for Child of God at the Venice Film Festival, adding that Haze’s acting in the movie is “the performance of a lifetime”.

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